We tested out the new free WiFi hotspots in New York City that used to be old payphones — and they're surprisingly speedy

LinkNYC
LinkNYC, the program that plans to convert old New York City payphones into Wi-Fi hotspots with handy USB charging ports, made its official debut today.

The so-called "Links" will eventually be available at 7,500 old payphones, but the retrofitted terminals are initially rolling out in beta testing across a few city blocks in Manhattan. We decided to give the Wi-Fi capabilities a test drive to see if connecting to these links in the future would be worth it.

Although Links are supposed to be available on all street corners between 13th and 19th street, this was the stand-in on the 19th street corner. Undeterred, we kept looking.

Brandt Ranj

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The corner of 17th and 3rd Avenue was more fruitful. Here's what an actual Link looks like. The Link is around 8ft tall, with two large screens on either side of it. In the upper corner is a "beta" sign.

Brandt Ranj

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The mini-vestibule in the middle of the Link is meant to replace old payphones. USB ports are also available for charging up your devices. A 911 button is also present, which may become very useful once all 7,500 Links are fully operational.

Brandt Ranj

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Connecting your phone to the Link is surprisingly easy. First enable Wi-Fi on your phone, and select "LinkNYC Free Wi-Fi."

Brandt Ranj

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The only piece of information you'll need to provide is your email address — don't worry, you won't need to sign up for some account or provide any sort of password.

Brandt Ranj

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Once you've entered your email, you can choose to join the public network or download a private key. The private key will link your phone to the Link network for future use, pre-approving you any time you connect to one.

Brandt Ranj

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Since I spend a lot of time in Manhattan, I opted to get a private key, which then prompts you to install a verified certificate. Once you hit install you're all done and ready to surf the web.

Brandt Ranj

Since I spend a lot of time in New York, I opted to get a private key, which prompts you to install this verified certificate, once you hit install you're all done and ready to surf.

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In order to test the Wi-Fi capabilities on the Link it was important to compare it to the speed of cell data. LTE is abundant in NYC and is currently the fastest available data stream. These are the results on AT&T, before we connected to the Link.

Brandt Ranj

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In the same spot as before, I connected to the Link and tried the same speed test. As the results show, connecting to the Link increased my download speed by over 5x, and upload speed over 9x. A significant upgrade. It's yet to be seen how the Link's speeds will change as more people connect to it, but as of now the technology appears capable of true broadband levels of bandwidth, at least at the 17th St/3rd Avenue terminal.